


this life (or the other one)

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Don't Call Her the Cavalry, F/M, Found Family, Future Fic, Gen, Meldrew, Phil & May friendship, Skoulson - Freeform, happy meldrew future, pregnant may
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 09:47:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6112663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil and May have a late night heart to heart about loving gifted people and family not turning out exactly how they thought it would.</p><p>(Not-too-distant future fic; title from Phil's comments in 1x10 about having to choose SHIELD life vs. family life.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	this life (or the other one)

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those that I don't think anyone but me wants to read -- too Skoulson-y for the Meldrew crowd and not Skoulson-y enough for the Skoulson crowd -- but whatever. It's Phil supporting May and May having a happy future with Andrew and Phil waiting at home to make his superhero girlfriend a sandwich and basically everything I want.

“Hi.”

Coulson nods at May from his spot sprawled on one of the couches in the comfortable common space where he’s been waiting for Daisy with a glass of scotch, having given up on working around midnight.

May is obviously tired and cranky, bleary-eyed and wearing her fluffy robe and slippers.

“Are they still out?”

“Yeah. Probably another hour. Andrew?”

“Sleeping,” she grouches and eases herself down into an easy chair.

“You’re not waking him up to enjoy your insomnia?”

“No,” May sighs, though a soft smile lifts the corner of her mouth. “He needs rest. Today was a long day for him.”

Three new Inhumans brought in in one week — and Daisy, Joey, Yo Yo, and Mack out looking for a possible fourth — means he’s been in very high demand.

Once they caught up with Andrew, once he was able to separate his gift from the outside force of _Lash_ , he made incredible progress. And he and Daisy have done a lot for their newfound Inhuman population. Coulson can’t imagine, really, where they’d be without him.

“We’re finding new powered people so much faster,” Coulson sighs and rubs his fingers against his temples.

“But Daisy’s doing a good job keeping up.”

“She is,” Coulson agrees, though he frowns. “But she needs rest, too.”

“And you?”

“I can’t seem to fall asleep alone anymore,” he tells May, and he can feel himself blush at the admission, at the way she raises a ridiculous eyebrow.

“That’ll fade.”

“I hope so. I feel really...pathetic.”

“That’s nothing new where Daisy is concerned,” May brushes it aside, and he’s not sure whether it’s meant to be insulting or comforting. She’s really good at that kind of playful ambiguity, which is comforting in its own way.

He frowns at her and reaches onto the coffee table for his scotch, takes a slow, careful sip before he sees her eyeing it longingly.

“Does it bother you? I can…”

“It’s fine,” she sighs, rubbing her hand down her belly. “I’ve gotten used to not being able to have things.”

“She’ll be worth it,” Coulson tells her, smiling a little too much at May and his future goddaughter.

“She better,” May grouses playfully, and rubs her stomach again, as though apologizing to her unborn baby for the joke.

They sink into a comfortable quiet — the kind of atmosphere that has always suited them well, that’s always felt easy.

He can remember late nights with her, sitting up and studying for an exam and then later planning missions, focused and quiet but interspersed with little moments of connection. It fits them, somehow — late nights and quiet and knowing they’d always have each other’s backs.

“How are you doing, besides the insomnia?”

May smiles at that — a little brittle and awkward. _This_ kind of stuff has never come quite so easily between them, these questions that can’t be brushed off with quiet jokes and platitudes, these questions that get really personal.

“Fine,” she answers, finally, in a way that practically announces there’s something on her mind.

Coulson just nods, though, doesn’t push it.

When they talk about things — and they do, they always have — it’s slowly, in time. And in the meantime, he’s able to just relax and feel so _grateful_ that she and Andrew have worked things out and chosen to stay with SHIELD.

“Do you ever —” May begins and then stalls. “Do you ever think about having children with Daisy?”

“We’ve talked about it,” he admits, not something he’s shared before. While everyone knows about his relationship with Daisy, it feels private to him — not something he talks about much.  “Why?”

“They would be…”

“Inhuman,” Coulson supplies.

“Yeah. That’s a sure thing?”

“Not necessarily. As near as we can tell from the genetics, it’s more likely to be passed from the mother, though.”

She nods. They had this conversation back when Andrew and May found out about their little surprise and made their decision. There’s no way to know at this stage, and given terrigen saturation, there’s no chance of stopping terrigenesis if she is.

“Are you worried about…” He points at her stomach.

“Not worried," she tells Coulson as she almost wraps her arms around her belly. “I’ll love her no matter what.” Which is the most obvious thing anyone could ever say.

“I know you will.”

Melinda May has a lot of love in her — it’s something Coulson has always known — and her old fears have mostly subsided, he thinks, as she’s worked as hard as any of them to take care of the powered people transforming every day.

“But she might be different than me,” May continues, “face things I’ll never understand. And I won’t know how to help her with that.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, he knows this fear intimately. Daisy has expressed particular interest in fostering, especially powered kids with nowhere else to go, and of course he’s almost as enthusiastic as she is. But it’s a fact that he’ll never really understand them, same as he’ll never really understand Daisy. “She’ll have Andrew, though. And Daisy.”

May smiles, but a sad smile.

“I know. And it’s good, but...”

“But?”

She shakes her head, and lets the room sink into silence for a few minutes — warm and comfortable, punctuated by small sips from his tumbler.

“Sometimes it seems like there’s this big part of Andrew’s life that I’ll just...never be able to understand.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. He knows this, this feeling of wanting to empathize and knowing that he never really can. Not fully.

“I can’t help with that part,” she states, like it’s something she’s been struggling with — the idea that her husband will have problems she can’t fix. And her daughter might, too.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t help him in other ways. Daisy says that...she felt like a monster when she changed. And it wasn’t other Inhumans who helped her see that she was still herself, it was us.”

“You.”

He shrugs. There are plenty of things he wishes he’d done better, and everyone — especially May — did their part to let Daisy know that they’d always go to the mat for her.

“Maybe.”

“That was when I knew,” she tells him. “I had...wondered before then, but the way you reacted when she changed, I realized how much you loved her.”

Coulson can feel his cheeks and ears heat up. It’s not something he’s totally comfortable discussing, if he’s honest, these minutia of how he fell in love with a woman he definitely wasn’t supposed to fall in love with. When it comes down to it, down to getting really personal, he knows he’s just as closed off as everyone perceives May to be, but he’s better at putting on the congenial outer layer...and maybe people just expect his silences because he’s a man.

“I just mean that…” He swallows as he tries to change the subject, “sometimes what Daisy needs is someone to remind her that even if she’s different, now, she’s still human, too.”

“That’s always been Andrew’s job,” she half-laughs. “Telling me I’m human, that I’m still good.”

Even when he was fully _Lash_ , there was always enough of Andrew that would never, not for a moment, let May think badly of herself.

“Maybe you’ll have to do it for each other.”

“I don’t think I can do it as well as he does.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“Don’t I?”

“Maybe you haven’t seen it, but I have. These last few years, you did a lot to support this team.”

“By being _The Cavalry_?”

“No, by being a friend. To me and to Daisy, especially, but everyone here is better because you’ve been here for them. And you know we’ll be here for you, too.”

Her face gets soft in a way that May rarely lets other people see, and then she frowns.

“Careful, Phil,” she warns him as she looks down into her lap. “Hormones.”

He laughs, endlessly charmed by pregnant May and her emotions so much closer to the surface.

“Before, when we were trying, I would sometimes worry about whether I would be a good mom. But now it’s…”

“Now you’ll be an even better mom. She’s lucky she’ll have you. And Andrew.”

“She’ll be lucky to have you and Daisy, too.”

Coulson smiles, comforted by the thought of their little found family. It’s not what he ever imagined for himself, back when he was daydreaming about impossible things, but somehow it fits better than anything he’s ever tried to imagine for himself.

“I used to daydream about having a normal life,” he tells May even though she knows already.

“PTA meetings, I remember.”

“Did you? Before?”

Before when it was an option, before when her husband wasn’t gifted, before she never had to wonder if her kid would be, before when normality was possible.

“Yes,” she answers honestly. “I did. I wanted to live in our perfect house with our two perfect kids and learn to bake.”

He laughs, but not because the idea is so incompatible with her. Maybe because it isn’t, maybe because he can see it — May smiling down at her children, giving them freshly baked cookies before going to work. Maybe because it’s possible, minus the house, and he can imagine her learning to bake, can imagine her frowning at another ruined loaf of bread.

“I’m not _that_ bad at cooking,” she defends herself, obviously imagining what’s in his head. “Just because Andrew likes to tease me about _one_ bad Thanksgiving —”

“And that dinner party with the raw chicken.”

She purses her lips at him, like she’s trying to keep from smiling, but eventually gives in.

“I would have learned.”

“I know,” he says with all the confidence of someone who has seen Melinda May do pretty much whatever she sets her mind to. “You still can.” She nods at that, rubs her hand over her belly thoughtfully as Coulson takes another sip off his scotch. “Did you ever imagine leaving SHIELD, before?”

“Sometimes,” she answers softly. “Mostly no.”

He nods — he gets that. He imagined leaving SHIELD plenty in half-hearted little ways that would never happen, back when he didn’t understand how he could ever have _both_ , love and duty. Back when he thought he had to give up one for the other.

“I think I was always so disappointed in myself that I never wanted a family enough really leave.” It disappointed Audrey, too, he knows. “I envied you and Andrew for trying to do both.”

“Do you think about it now? Leaving SHIELD?” May tilts her head as she asks the question, like she’s never given that much thought to who he would be outside of SHIELD, never considered he might actually do it. He doesn’t blame her for never really believing him when he talked about getting out — he never really meant it, after all.

“Not so much anymore. Daisy needs to be here, and I…” He swallows. “I belong where she is.”

“You belong here for other reasons, too.”

“Yeah,” he answers, but dismissively because the truth of the matter is that Daisy is the future of SHIELD — not him. It’s about Daisy and Joey and Yo-Yo and the promise of gifted individuals working side-by-side with non-powered people to protect each other.

“The point is that I don’t have to choose,” he tells her. “I can do good with SHIELD and still have…”

“Family,” May supplies, her hand resting on her belly.

“Yeah.”

He smiles at her, glowing and happy from finding all the things she’s wanted, even if it isn’t exactly how she’s always imagined it.

And they’ve never been the best at saying the big things to each other, things like _I’m so glad you’re my family_ , so Coulson just smiles and swallows the last of his scotch before rising from the couch.

“Come on, I’ll make you some Sleepy Time tea.”

“I hate that stuff,” May frowns, letting Coulson pull her up from her chair so they can walk to the kitchen.

“Is your mom going to send any more of the stuff you do like?”

“Hmm, when she’s back from Russia. Soon, I hope.”

“Peppermint, then?”

“Yeah,” she breathes out a long-suffering sigh and eases herself into a chair to watch him fill the kettle and pull out things to make Daisy a sandwich.

“Thanks, Phil,” she smiles softly when he places a mug in front of her.

“Any time.”


End file.
